Kit
Kat “Momiji Manju”

Taste:
2.5

Texture:
4.5

Novelty:
2.5

All
scores out of 5

This
is an odd Kit Kat. It’s based on a popular treat found in Hokkaido
that’s often sold during the fall season. It’s designed
to celebrate the fall season, and often snapped like a maple leaf.
The assumption when you first see the cake (or the package of this
Kit Kat) is that it might be filled with some kind of maple filling,
but it’s not. It’s actually filled with manju (red bean
paste). The second assumption is that maybe the cake is maple flavoured,
but it’s not. This is simply a small plain or vanilla flavoured
cake filled with red bean paste that looks like a maple leaf.

This then makes for an
odd choice to make a Kit Kat bar because the selling point of the
original cake is the shape. If you take the shape away it’s
just like many of the other cakes you find around Japan during festival
seasons. What you would expect then, is for this bar to simply be
a red bean paste Kit Kat, but it’s not. The problem is that
this bar doesn’t really taste like red bean paste at all. It
also doesn’t taste like maple either. So other than a couple
of little maple leaves imprinted on the bar, it’s not really
like its namesake at all.

The flavour is just sweet,
with a strange light bitter aftertaste. The strongest flavour I could
identify was a subtle vanilla, likely from the white chocolate. It’s
great to celebrate the special snacks from all over Japan, but it’s
hard when many of them are basically the same flavour. That is unless
Kit Kat finds a way to celebrate the unique shapes as well.